


Broken Pieces

by holysmotez



Series: Remake Deleted Scenes [2]
Category: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Character Study, Cloud Strife Needs a Hug, Deleted Scenes, F/M, FFVII Remake, FFVII Remake spoilers, Kinda, Sad, Spoilers, cloud being hard on himself, wants to give a hug really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:54:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23933422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holysmotez/pseuds/holysmotez
Summary: A tumblr-prompted short fic about Cloud's perspective during the opening events of Chapter 13: A Broken World.  FFVII Remake spoilers.
Relationships: Tifa Lockhart/Cloud Strife
Series: Remake Deleted Scenes [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1732945
Comments: 15
Kudos: 154





	Broken Pieces

**Author's Note:**

> So apparently, Cloud was having a battle with himself while watching Barret be a grown up and give Tifa some much-needed comfort from a friend. This is a fic featuring what might have been going through Cloud's mind before and during this tragic scene. 
> 
> Thanks for the prompt, headspacedad!

Cloud blinks, gazing up into the night. A dusty haze swirls and flows past him. No, not dust. Smoke, thick red-orange plumes of it, rise and fade up into the black sky. There's sky now, because the plate was gone.

_Shit. The plate fell._

He spasms and lurches. His entire body weighs like lead as he rolls forward to sit up, flecks of dust and soot rolling off his hair and chest. He shakes out his ankles, his knees, then rolls his shoulders, wincing as he takes himself through a quick physical inventory. He aches all over. He must have hit the ground shoulder first, or had collided it into some falling debris, as he could sense the bone-deep bruise forming already. Like hell he could remember very clearly after he had jumped on the zipline with Barret and Tifa. 

_Tifa._ He whips about, searching. Remembers to breathe only when he finds Tifa laying on her side a few feet away from where he landed. He rolls over onto his knees and crawls over to her. 

"Ti-," he chokes out, his mouth already parched from the hot, acrid air. He leans down, putting his ear to her mouth. The faint but consistent puffs of breath against his cheek are a small but welcome relief. He pulls back, swallows down the funny taste in the back of his throat. He clears it with a cough and tries again. "Tifa!"

There's no answer but the crackle of raging fires and the muffled moans of the wounded and dying.

As he kneels next to her, he realizes he has no idea how long they had been out. His recollection comes back in spurts and blurs of shattering concrete and steel. He’s pretty sure the hairs on the back of his neck had cooked through in their escape from the inferno. Tifa, at least, appears like she made it out physically about as well as he did. Small consolation that a few bruises and some singed hairs were the worst of it. 

So many people couldn't say the same. So many weren't so lucky. The smoldering heat of the rubble and falling ash sting at his eyes. His nose turns, assaulted by a mixture of burning oil, rubber, and flesh. He can feel it seeping into his clothes and skin like a bloodstain. That smell, that heat. It's the smell of misery, and callous disregard. His breath shudders. He feels sick with it. Again.

_Again. Some things you never get used to._

He hisses when a spike of pain lances through his head. That same spike whose ambushes were becoming all too familiar ever since he returned to Midgar. It’s there and then gone, pain receding as rapidly as its onset when, muffled by the walls of broken concrete and smoke, Barret calls out from somewhere beyond their cramped little pocket. 

Loose concrete continues to crack and crumble. Somewhere, a piece of metal shifts, clangs, and crashes into the earth. Even as the ground trembles, Tifa hardly stirs. Relieved that Barret was evidently alive and lucid, Cloud wants to let Tifa slumber in peace a little longer. He wants to give her more time, as much time with that peace as he could, somewhere else far away from the atrocity sinking further and further into the dirt. 

But the constant, thundering clamor reminds him that it wasn't safe here. They had to get moving soon before more rubble started to collapse. 

"Tifa!" he urges again, pleading for a response from her. He leans back on his heels, fist clenching and unclenching, silently begging her to come back to him.

Yet even with the threat of mortal danger, can't imagine budging an inch from her side. He sits, frozen and simmering in conflict as he waits. He looks down at her limp hand, letting his brain toy with the idea of picking hers up with his own. Maybe she needs his strength. Or more likely, he needs to tether himself against doing something ridiculous, like giving into the urge to scoop her up into his arms. 

His shoulder hurts. His eyes, dry and itching, snap shut. He had tried so hard, he gave everything he had, and he still couldn't stop any of this from happening. 

Despite himself, his heart leaps to his throat when she begins to wake. The sound of her sharp intake of breath and the strangled cough that follows ease the tension in his hands, though not the sick feeling in his stomach. Rather, it worsens when her glassy, ruby gaze sharpens after meeting his, then sweeps out across the surrounding carnage. Her soft gasp is all he needs to hear to know that her faculties and sense of reality has returned to her, full force.

Before he can think to ask whether she's hurt, she gets her feet under her. And before he can say anything at all, his hand shoots out to help her up by the arm. She doesn't utter a word, and he gives up on offering one-- there is no word for what has happened. She barely seems to register his existence, let alone her own pain as she pushes forward and leads them out from their pocket in the destruction. 

He follows her, uselessly and silently, stooping to fit himself through a hole in the rubble. Tifa's ears catch on Barret's persistent howling, and she calls out to him as they clear the way. Eventually, they come face-to-face with the compacted wreckage spilling out from the Sector 7 gate, where they also find Barret, gawking at the mess in shock.

"Marlene...Marlene! Marlene!" he calls out for his little girl. He’s in one piece at least, but he paces to and fro, his bitter anguish exposed like a grievous wound to the fiery air as he calls out for his buried comrades. "Biggs! Wedge! Jessie!"

The slim hope dies out. Barret curses. Curses, and throws his fist into the concrete. Again, and again, until his knuckles must have turned bloody under his gloves. With his energy spent, Tifa steps forward until she can place a steady hand at her friend's back.

"It was us. We did this," she says.

Barret’s shoulders tense, his whole body straining to contain his rage. With his fist still buried against the wall of concrete, he tells her, "No. You can't think like that. Whatever came before, it was Shinra that pulled the trigger today. Am I right?"

That much was fact. Ever since joining up with Shinra, Cloud knew that when the company wanted to put their foot down, they put it down hard. No one took from Shinra without them taking their pound of flesh back in return. Their world of politics, war, and profit was little more than a board game to them, and human lives were nothing but pieces that could be used and wiped away at will. To tell the truth, Shinra's actions tonight didn't faze him. Not really. The only shocking thing about them dropping an entire plate was the sheer scale of the indifference he knew only too well.

There's even a part of him that has to admit that bearing witness to his comrades' suffering doesn't rattle him that deeply, either. Only guilt. Guilt that sits in his gut as if he had swallowed a brick when he was gliding down the rope. Biggs, Wedge, Jessie, and even Barret, despite their differences, and despite all the shit he gave them, always treated him well. Like a valued colleague, not just hired muscle. He didn’t deserve it, and none of them deserved this. Even if Jessie believed this was their bill coming due for the reactor bombings, then why was he still alive, when he shared just as much blood on his hands?

No. Guilt and karma aside, what really unsettles him now, and what he can't seem to stop staring at, isn't Barret in his wailing or Shinra's indifference smoldering in the background. Rather, it's the comparative stillness and quiet of the person standing a few feet away, ramrod straight and silent as a grave. 

_Tifa. Was she...?_

"...Yeah," she says. 

Something aches in him at the resignation in her voice, and the tremble of her fists. 

_Why won't you go to her?_

While he hesitates, Barret turns to her, and notices the same tremble. And probably, the tears she’s fighting to hold back. 

_Because...because I’m…_

Barret reaches for her hand and tells her, "Hold onto this. This... _anger._ You hear me?" 

Then, Barret pulls her forward, letting her rest against him. She sinks into his offered comfort.

_Weak._

Cloud tenses, twitching. Something - or someone - thrashes in his chest. Like something forgotten, chained up, surging against the bars of its prison at the sound of footsteps. His back teeth grind together. The smoky air gets harder to breathe. The sight of such a simple, kind gesture was ridiculous to get so agitated over, but it makes him want to leap straight out of his skin all the same. 

_You could be what she needs right now, you know._

_No._ No, that was impossible, because Barret wasn't the great big idiot who thought he could waltz back into her life and renew a childhood promise to her, as if the past five years ago never happened. He wasn't the fool pretending like they were fourteen again, back when their world was small, the stars were infinite, and it was easy to talk big. What could he say for himself now that he grew up, the world got a lot bigger, and he _still_ couldn't keep his promise? When he still couldn't stop her new family, her new home from being crushed under fire and cruelty? He had fought so hard, he had hurried until his legs ached, but he was still so weak.

She was in trouble and hurting even now, and he still wasn’t strong enough to hold her broken pieces together like that. Yet here he was, selfishly imagining himself prying Barret off, shoving him away, and wrapping Tifa up in his arms instead.

 _What was_ wrong _with him?_

The more he looks on, the more he feels like he's drowning within himself. His lungs ache. He has to do something. _Think_ of something. There has to be something he can salvage from this before Tifa asks him to leave. 

His pulse quickens. Because eventually, she would. He knows it’s inevitable now, but he just... _can’t._ He can’t stop himself from being a useless, selfish, unworthy, needy sack of shit for as long as she’ll let him get away with it.

_How could she ever want him anywhere near her now?_

He feels sick again. He wants to gouge out his own eyes when they prickle with tears.

_Why was he always such a failure?_

Then, like a life preserver floating into reach, he remembers the last thing Aerith had last said to them. Silently thanking the Planet, the stars, and everything other blessed thing for Aerith, and for the sliver of hope he can latch onto, he all but rushes to his own rescue when he blurts, "Barret. Marlene's fine.”

That gets Barret’s full, albeit puzzled, attention. 

“Aerith found her,” Cloud supplies, needing Tifa to believe he was the one tossing out the life preserver, and not simply sharing it with Barret who deserved it far more than he did. 

At least the tears in Tifa’s eyes are gone by the time she turns back around. Good. Maybe, just maybe, she’ll let him stick around for a little while longer.


End file.
